My first year as a Purple Martin Landlord!

So a couple years ago I asked my Grandmother if I could have my Grandpa's old Purple Martin House. He had it for years, and I have so many fond memories of sitting on his lap on the porch listening to the Martin's sing, and watching them swoop around catching bugs. He was passionate about his Martins and when he started to get sick the Martin house became neglected and the birds stopped coming. After he died the Martin house was taken down and left in a corner of one of the barns. My Grandmother was surprised I wanted it, especially because it was in really bad shape! But she said I could take it if I really wanted it, and even enlisted some of my uncles to help pull up the pole and mounting system for me.

It's been a couple of years and I had to track down some missing parts online (this particular martin house is no longer manufactured and the company was bought out); the house needed a good clean, and the mounting system was so badly out of order that my husband and I had to come up with an entirely new pulley system.

We got the house set up and mounted back in May. There's a smal colony of Martin's that have frequented our neighborhood pool, and a couple other neighbors have already put up houses for them. The Martins started flying around overhead before we even got the house all the way up the pole, and within about 30 seconds of getting it set they were already checking it out!

We've got 8-9 Martins that have decided to make our yard their home; three nesting pairs, and some other sub-adults who are practicing their nest building but not laying eggs yet.

Week 1: Found the beginnings of nests in three of the boxes. Lots of sticks and dried grass, and a little mud to hold them together.

Week 2: Nest building continued, with lots of leaves and sticks, lots of mud shoring them up. Martins are really active and have discovered the butterflies around the passionflower vines.

Week 3:  One of the nests was lined with little leaves, the last step before egg-laying! The other two nests were bigger and a couple of boxes on the back side of the house had sticks and grass in them.

Week 4: We have eggs! The nest with the leaves has five little white eggs in it. One of the other nests is now lined with leaves and mud. Other boxes have small amounts of grass and sticks from where the sub-adults are practicing their building skills.

Week 5: Three babies hatched, two eggs left. Second nest has three eggs. Other nests stayed about the same level of incomplete.

Week 6: All five eggs in the first nest are hatched. Babies are starting to darken in color. Second nest has three hatched babies! One other nest is now lined with leaves and ready for eggs, and another nest has eggs.

Since our Martin colony is so new, I'm not doing daily nest checks. I don't want to stress out my young parents or their babies, so I check the nest twice a week. If it rains or gets extra windy we lower the house to half-mast on the pole to stabilize it. Now that there are babies we do a daily ground check to make sure no one has fallen out or had an accident. The Martins are getting very protective and will now dive-bomb me and fuss at me while I'm working in my garden! I don't really mind that much, but it's definitely a bit unnervineg at first!

We're debating putting up some netting under the house; snakes can be a real problem for Martin colonies and can wipe out an entire group in one go. I've just got to figure out at way to affix the netting that won't endanger the Martins while they're flying around. I may need to get a thicker/darker netting so they can see it and steer clear. Option 2 is to grease the pole, but the pole is quite close to some of the garden beds and I don't want something nasty washing into the dirt and ground. I'll have to do some research about ways to grease the pole that are environmentally friendly.

I have no experience with your particular dilemma; but looking at that pole, the first thing that comes to mind is a section of barbed or razor wire, several feet above the ground, wrapped around several feet of pole. I am assuming a snake would need to coil around the pole to climb it, if closely wrapped would this defeat the snake?

Congratulations on becoming a cheep landlord!

If you could get one of those "squirrel cones" that was a tight enough fit on your pole, would that stop the snakes?

Lorinne Anderson wrote: looking at that pole, the first thing that comes to mind is a section of barbed or razor wire, several feet above the ground, wrapped around several feet of pole. I am assuming a snake would need to coil around the pole to climb it, if closely wrapped would this defeat the snake?

I think it probably would work, I'd just need to make sure there weren't lots of spaces they could sneak their way through!

Jay Angler wrote:If you could get one of those "squirrel cones" that was a tight enough fit on your pole, would that stop the snakes?

This also sounds like a good option! I could probably rig something like this with some sheet metal, so it probably wouldn't be too expensive either.

Thank you so much for sharing your story, the wonderful pictures of the house, the adults, the nests, the eggs, and the beautiful Purple Martin babies! The whole thing was a treat!

We recently put up a purple martin house, too! No takers yet... Sometimes people wait years, but I'm hoping next year :)

Thank you for sharing your awesome story and pictures!

Heidi Schmidt wrote:We recently put up a purple martin house, too! No takers yet... Sometimes people wait years, but I'm hoping next year :)

Thank you for sharing your awesome story and pictures!

When we put ours up we had other local Martin caretakers let us know that it was kind of late in the season; they were suprised when we got nesters. I think it's because there is another very crowded colony nearby and there were lots of sub-adults hanging around and looking for space.

I hope the migrating Martins check out your setup and come make use of it next year! It's been an amazing experience and I'm already looking for ways to expand our setup for next year.

Today's nest check is on hold due to some very ominous looking clouds overhead and lots of thundery rumblings; I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow! Our first nest of babies is getting really noisy; I can hear them peeping and cheeping while I'm working in the garden. Their mama is definitely fiesty and keeps dive-bombing me and yelling at me while I work. I've started sitting down to tend the beds closest to the nest so she's less nervous.

As promised I have more pictures!

Our first nest of fledglings are almost as big as their parents now; they’re hanging out in two different nests since they’ve gotten bigger.

Second nest is almost as big, will probably start exploring soon.

Last sets of babies are all growing in their first feathers!

The last nest is still built (but empty) and I don’t think we’ll get any eggs in it this year. Probably just some sub-adults practicing their nest-building skills

The Martins are back! We had a freak winter storm here in Texas and had below freezing temperatures for a week, and I was worried that any Martins that had already started their trip back to us had frozen and died. Luckily that was not the case and our first 4 adult Martins arrived last week on Thursday.